Voters Are Frustrated. Will Democrats Be Able to Do Something With It?

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Around 6 on a Monday evening, I found myself standing in a Marriott Hotel ballroom in Bridgewater, New Jersey, talking to a retired police chief about his newfound passion for protesting Donald Trump.

“Never been much of a protest, until Jan. 20,” Robert Quinlan told me. “I never in my lifetime thought that this could happen in America—that our democracy could really be in danger.”

Dressed in jeans and a track jacket, the 66-year-old had warm eyes and spoke gently as he explained to me the case of Karim Daoud , a father of two who had recently been detained by immigration authorities after a regular check-in. Daoud has been living in the US for the past 20 years; he's married to a US citizen and worked at a local bar and grill. According to his GoFundMe page, there's a chance Daoud could be moved to a detention center across the country , separating him from his family and lawyer.

“He’s got a wife and kids—what are they going to do without him?” Quinlan's voice cracked, and tears began welling up in his eyes. He took a minute to compose himself. “What good does that do this country to have a family now who doesn't have a father? We're seeing good, hardworking people getting dragged off by ICE.”

Quinlan said that ever since Trump took office again, he's been stuck in a state of shock. He decided to do something about it by creating a Facebook group with like-minded friends and community members in which they organized protests against the Trump administration and their Republican representative, Tom Kean Jr.—who has been following GOP leadership's recent directive to avoid giving in-person town halls as Trump's agenda has grown more unpopular . (Kean did recently hold a 35-minute telephone meeting with constituents for which questions had to be submitted in advance. He did not respond to a request for comment.)

At this point, the ballroom was filled with locals peering around. Some brought homemade signs with them, while others were holding the “Benefits Over Billionaires” posters that had been placed on each chair. Sitting front and center, just a few rows from the stage, Quinlan and his wife were patiently waiting for California Rep. Ro Khanna to take the stage.

Since losing the presidential election last November, Democrats have been grappling, quite publicly, with an identity crisis. While Trump is actively trying to dismantle the federal government, firing thousands of federal workers, defying court orders, and carrying out deportations without due process, Democrats have struggled to find the right response. Voters are infuriated: First, it was allowing every one of Trump's Cabinet picks to sail through the nomination process, then it was the paltry protest to his State of the Union address. What pushed many over the edge was when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer actually whipped Democratic votes to pass Republicans' government funding bill. The party faced seething criticism for this.

But more recently, in a twist of fate, Republicans have handed them an opportunity to step up and show some leadership. Shortly after GOP leaders advised Republican members of Congress not to host town halls in their home districts—constituents angry about the president's agenda were showing up and turning those gatherings into a political liability—the Democratic National Committee announced a new initiative: It would host in-person town halls across the country instead. It has recruited willing members of the party to speak to frustrated voters and field their questions, specifically in competitive GOP-held districts.

Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley, has been vocal about how the Democratic Party needs a change in direction. “Our party became stale,” he told reporters when he was speaking at Yale Law School earlier this month. “The same personalities. The same talking points. The same consultants. And I'm excited that you've got a lot of new voices that are emerging.”

Similarly, in March, during a town hall in Bakersfield, California, Khanna said , “Our messaging is too fragmented. The old guard isn't cutting it.”

I wanted to see for myself what kind of message the party was putting out there now, and how it was being received on the ground. So I went to two Democratic-run events back to back—one in New Jersey and another in Scranton, Pennsylvania. They both served a similar purpose—to engage with frustrated voters—but their approaches differed. One offered a sympathetic ear, while the other handed out tools to combat an administration set on dismantling American democracy.

“The goal is to get Republicans to be more loyal to their constituents than to Donald Trump,” Khanna told me in an interview ahead of the New Jersey town hall. “Right now, these Republicans are hiding from their constituents. They're not standing up for them, and they're voting against their constituents' interests on Medicaid, closing Social Security offices, and cutting public education.”

Khanna, who has not shied away from the speculation over his potential future presidential run, hopes that applying pressure to Republicans will flip enough of them to stop the drastic cuts to social programs that the Trump administration is eyeing in the upcoming budget bill . If they don't, Khanna hopes that they will realize they risk losing their seats in 2026.

Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin has also been headlining town halls in Ohio and in a GOP-held district in his state. “In the old days, it was sufficient for a lot of members to show up, press a red button, and send out a monthly newsletter,” he told me over the phone before I headed out to the town halls. “Today our constituents across the country are demanding that elected officials be organizers, strategists, and leaders for democratic opposition to authoritarianism in America. That's a daily assignment.”

Back at the New Jersey Marriott, the ballroom was nearing capacity, and there was an excited energy in the air as hundreds of locals—a mostly white, older crowd—chatted with their seatmates, waiting for the town hall to begin. Soon, every chair was occupied, and stragglers stood on the thick maple leaf–patterned carpet at the edges of the room.

Bridgewater falls in New Jersey's ^7th District, one of the wealthiest congressional districts in the United States. The Cook Political Report, which rates how partisan districts are, scores the ^7th District as “even,” meaning it votes about the same as the nation as a whole . Trump won the district in 2024; Biden won it in 2020.

Kean, the district's relatively new rep, did not seem particularly popular here. Standing right outside the ballroom was a person dressed in an inflatable chicken costume, handing out flyers with “Missing: Have You Seen This Congressman?” printed across the top in all caps. Kean is a former state senator who went on to work for the George HW Bush administration. In 2020 he unsuccessfully ran for Congress, but after redistricting made the ^7th slightly redder, Kean was able to narrowly win the seat in 2022.

Sitting toward the back of the ballroom was a couple looking around anxiously. I approached them and asked what had brought them to the town hall. “I'm upset that we have taken away money for research for cancer, for kids, for education, for public safety, only to save a couple million dollars,” he said, adding that he's got two young kids at home. “And only to pledge to give it to the military. I’m upset about all of that.” He declined to give me his name for fear of losing his job—he said he's a contractor for the Department of Education, an agency that the president has pledged to dramatically pare back .

Around 7 pm, the organizers of the event took to the stage. After a few speeches from local leaders and activists, Khanna walked onstage. The audience welcomed him with thunderous applause.

Khanna opened his speech with all the ways the Trump administration has hurt Americans' pocketbooks, pointing to the recent stock-market crash resulting from the president's erratic tariff plan. Then he laid out his vision of what sets his party apart from Republicans. “Democrats believe instead of cutting Medicaid, we need to expand Medicare,” he said. “Instead of dismantling education, at a time where the world is competing based on knowledge, that we need to fundamentally invest in preschool, K–12, and college.”

He drew on his personal story to make the case that Democrats are the true party of the working class. Khanna's parents immigrated to the US from India in the 1960s, right as President John F. Kennedy pledged to send an American to the moon. “This was the place to be,” he said. “America was the place that spoke to the hopes and dreams of people around the world.”

As a child growing up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Khanna said, he flourished because everyone from his teachers to Little League coaches had helped him. Now, by cutting education funding, forcing the stock market to tumble, and threatening Medicare, he said, the Trump administration was attacking “the very thing that makes America exceptional.”

Khanna spent much of his speech painting a picture of the party's promise and potential—but when it came to addressing the pointed questions of people in the room, he was more evasive.

After his remarks, two long lines began forming on each end of the stage. One audience member, Jacob, who identified himself as a 28-year-old with autism, stepped up to the microphone. “I think there's an elephant in the room—in this case, a donkey,” he said. “The Democratic Party, which has presented itself as the resistance, has up to this point done anything but resist.”

The room erupted into cheers and applause. “As a young person, I see this real thirst for more-progressive policies, like universal health care and the like,” Jacob continued. “What are you and some of your colleagues doing to push the Democratic Party into doing more?”

Khanna focused only on the last part of Jacob's question, saying he believes that the future of the country is a progressive one and noting that he has advocated for Medicare for All, universal child care, and increasing the federal minimum wage. He also endorsed a new initiative launched by DNC Vice Chair David Hogg, the founder of progressive advocacy group Leaders We Deserve, that will fund younger Democratic candidates who primary older incumbents in safe blue districts.

Answering a question about immigration, Khanna took the chance to put his own party on blast. A middle-aged woman took the mic and explained that, as a naturalized US citizen from Colombia, she's deeply concerned about the Trump administration's lawless deportation of immigrants, like Venezuelan makeup artist Andry Hernandez Romero . “What do we do?” she asked. “We're doing everything we can. We are in the streets to make Democrats have more spine.”

After first prompting the crowd to give her a round of applause, Khanna ran down his own record on immigration, pointing to a recent speech he gave at Yale about the Trump administration's attack on the rule of law, due process, and the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case. “If you're a Democrat and you're not willing to stand up for the due process rights of immigrants and the vulnerable, then you need to find another line of work,” Khanna proclaimed to roaring applause. “It's not the time for cowardice, because what beats fear is not hiding. What beats fear is inspiring and reminding people of the vision of America we believe in.”

But throughout the evening, Khanna answered questions mostly with broad, big-picture answers—he was light on specifics about what Democrats would be doing next to push back on Trump. It's an approach that voters generally seem to be tired of; some who spoke to the New York Times earlier this year criticized Democrats for being too scripted and controlled. Now, five months out from a bruising general election loss, the party is attempting to stand up a coherent strategy with this town hall tour but still appears to be struggling with pushing a message that voters want to hear.

Khanna focused on a broad-strokes reprimand of Trump, but many folks in that Marriott ballroom already agreed that the president's agenda is bad, their sinking retirement accounts a flashing-red reminder. Instead, they wanted to know exactly what levers Democrats are pulling right now to prevent or at least slowly down the president's attacks on Medicare, Social Security, education, and immigration.

Internally, even the party is divided over what approach it should be taking in this current political climate. The Times reported that Schumer held a private call with half a dozen Democratic governors, who urged him to push back on the entirety of Trump's agenda, not just on issues the party perceives as winnable. “He is not somebody that you can appease,” JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, told the Times. “We've got to stand up and fight. And by the way, at the state level, I think many of us are. But I think that we've got to make sure that in the Senate and the House, that the people who have a platform are standing up.”

To his credit, Khanna continued to answer residents' questions at the town hall for another two hours, making sure to allow everyone in line behind the microphone a chance to say something. He genuinely engaged with the crowd and did so with a noticeable ease and comfort, throwing in jokes and holding a smile. Despite his evasiveness on some questions, the attendees were clearly delighted to see Khanna and appreciated that a member of Congress had flown over to hear them out.

When one resident, named Raj, took the mic, he made a familiar—and probably not particularly welcome—reference: He told Khanna that he reminded him of former President Barack Obama. “Obama rescued the auto industry, but [Trump] is destroying it,” Raj went on. “The next four years look disastrous,” he said. “How are you going to solve this?”

Khanna, who just minutes earlier had endorsed the idea of ​​bringing in a new, younger class of democratic leadership, demurred. “Wishing for another Obama is like wishing for another king who is once in a generation,” he said.

The next night, rather than taking in another session of top-down messaging from national Democrats, I got a more grassroots look at the resistance to Trump right now. I drove over to Scranton, Pennsylvania, for a civics fair that local Democratic groups had decided to put on instead of a town hall.

With support from the national party, the “Good Trouble Fest” was an opportunity for local Democrats distressed about the direction of the country, and perhaps tired of waiting for elected representatives to come to the rescue, to gather, talk to each other, and discover ways to get more engaged in politics themselves.

“We want to make sure that we're giving them opportunities to take action and fight back now so that they don't have to wait for the upcoming election,” said Kait Ahern, the deputy political director of youth outreach for the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. The group organized the civic-action fair along with the Lackawanna County Federation of Democratic Women , Abington Democrats , Sierra Club Pennsylvania , 50501 , PA College Democrats , and more.

The community space looked like one that would normally be used for a post–church service dinner, located a couple hundred yards behind St. Mary's Byzantine Catholic church. It was outfitted with wood-paneled walls and green-and-red carpet that reminded me of Christmas wrapping paper. It could hold about 400 people and was filling up by the minute. As each person entered, they were handed a white label and a Sharpie to create a name tag for themselves. The room kind of had the energy of a Scholastic book fair.

Several round, family-style tables were concentrated in the middle of the room, and each one had a cluster of red, white, and blue balloons floating from the center, alongside a basket of pretzels. At the edges of the room, local groups had tables where people could sign up to become a poll worker, apply for a mail ballot, or make friendship bracelets, reminiscent of Taylor Swift's beaded-bracelet craze during her “Eras” tour. One table was piled high with free white yard signs that said “Medicare Saves Lives” in a large red typeface.

On the left-hand side of the room was an array of different climate groups. One of them was handing out slices of a giant vanilla sheet cake, half of it covered in green icing to represent grass and the other half a hodgepodge of brown, black, and gray icing to depict trash. “Good Trouble Can Stop Landfills” was written along the side of the cake in red icing. The next table over offered cookies decorated with the green recycling symbol and trash cans. There was also an open bar serving soft drinks, wine, and beer.

Most folks came to the fair with a plus-one but, upon entering, would spot a neighbor or acquaintance across the room and begin chatting. People seemed genuinely curious and excited, stopping by each table to understand what each organization was about, grabbing a free pen or sticker before moving on to the next table.

The people I met in Scranton seemed to share similar frustrations to the folks I saw in New Jersey, but this event gave them an opportunity to channel those concerns into action. Stripped of any pomp and circumstance, the fair was purely focused on highlighting Democratic groups in and around Scranton that were looking for more people to join their ranks.

Abington Democrats was one of these groups, and its members were seeking to recruit potential candidates for the city's upcoming municipal elections. They were handing out one-sheeters that listed all the open positions, alongside a job description, expected time commitment, and pay.

Jen Partyka, a registered nurse who serves as the group's treasurer, told me that almost all of those positions currently had no Democratic candidate running. She hoped to change that by educating people on what it actually takes to become an elected official. “We have an open judge of elections position, there's a school board position open, things like that,” Partyka said. “Then we're teaching them how to do a write-in campaign, whether that's getting 10 Democratic signatures on the primary ballot so then they'll show up in the general election, teaching them basic stuff about getting yourself into office.”

Scranton—famously, Joe Biden's hometown—is a staunchly blue dot in Lackawanna County, a historically Democratic district that over the years has shifted to battleground territory. In 2012 Obama carried Lackawanna by 30 points , but in 2020, Biden held on by only 8 . Last year, the county voted for Kamala Harris for president by only 3 points . The county falls within Pennsylvania's ^8th District and is surrounded by cities that largely went for Trump . In November, Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan Jr. replaced Democrat Matt Cartwright, who had held the seat in this district for six terms.

Abington Democrats want more people to pay attention to Scranton's local elections and understand the connection between local government and core community resources, like maintaining hospitals and funding schools. “I feel like there's a tremendous amount of respect that we should be holding for these offices,” Partyka said. “Yes, you're only a supervisor for a town of a thousand [people], but these are roles that are closest to your community.”

Partyka doesn't consider Trump's second presidential win a mandate for Republicans. She thinks there were plenty of Democrats who chose to stay home for the election. “We just have to do this silly little work,” she said. “Go to your municipal elections, vote, run for something. It sounds silly, but it's the way that you change things.”

That idea resonated with Cathi McCormack, a 60-year-old supervisor at a local medical lab who said she's frustrated with national Democrats and is itching to do something. She said she has attended a few protests since Trump took office, and after this fair, she's also seriously considering running for local municipal office.

After the president's tariff whiplash, McCormack said, her 401(k) took a huge hit. “I wanted to retire in five years, and now I might not be able to do that,” she said. She's also concerned about Medicare cuts because she has a niece with Down syndrome who relies heavily on federal assistance.

Even though the focus of the fair was on how one could take action locally, it also opened up the floor for those in attendance to air their frustrations.

Organizers of the event took to the stage at the front of the room, asking folks to settle down. They began to deliver short speeches, mostly thanking people for taking the time to come. Suddenly, one of the speakers turned the agenda around to the audience. “What are you frustrated about today?” he asked.

For the next 20 minutes, the room turned into a therapy session; people stood up and shared pent-up thoughts and emotions they had been experiencing over the past three months.

“Undocumented students and their parents should never be afraid to go to a public school. They should always be welcome!” a middle-aged woman with glasses shouted.

“As a physician, I'm sick and tired of nonmedical people telling us how to practice medicine,” said an older woman with white hair and a hot pink T-shirt.

“If one person doesn’t get due process, none of us do!” a woman toward the back of the room shouted.

“Congress should be doing more!” a man with salt-and-pepper hair exclaimed.

Since Trump took office for the second time, Democratic leadership has emphasized that its hands are tied . House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries noted the reality of what his party is dealing with when the GOP controls “the House, the Senate, and the presidency. It’s their government.” Still, there are levers Democrats can pull, like when New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker held the Senate floor for 25 hours to rail against the Trump administration, while also conceding that his party has made some serious mistakes .

Eventually, the “Good Trouble Fest” wound down, and the small crowd began to pack up their pamphlets and finish the last bites of their cake. On her way out, I caught Karen Arscott, a retired doctor who spoke about practicing medicine in Trump's America. She told me she came from a family of Republicans but that after Trump's first election, she switched her party registration to Democrat. “I don’t want to be aligned with that group,” she said.